N.Y. bishop accused of sexual abuse booted from ministry

An auxiliary Catholic bishop in New York, John Jenik, has been accused of sexual abuse and removed from his public ministry, Catholic officials said.

“Although the alleged incidents occurred decades ago, the Lay Review Board has concluded that the evidence is sufficient to find the allegation credible and substantiated,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said in a statement Wednesday.

The allegation involves an inappropriate relationship with a teenage boy in the 1980s, according to the accuser and his lawyer. Jenik, 74, denied the allegation, which will be investigated by the Vatican.

In an Oct. 29 letter to his parishioners, he wrote: “I continue to steadfastly deny that I have ever abused anyone at any time. Therefore I will ask the Vatican, which has ultimate jurisdiction over such cases to review the matter, with the hope of ultimately proving my innocence.”

The removal of Jenik from his public duties is a milestone in the widening abuse scandal in the United States. He is the first active bishop to be accused in the wave of abuse allegations that began in June with the news that one of the nation’s top prelates, retired Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, had been accused of assaulting an altar boy in the 1970s.

In September, the attorney general in New York announced a statewide civil investigation into allegations of sexual abuse and cover up in Roman Catholic dioceses. More than a dozen states have opened investigations since the release in August of a grand jury report documenting abuse and cover up by more than 300 priests in Pennsylvania.

Last week, federal investigators instructed all dioceses in the nation to preserve all church documents related to sex abuse because of a Department of Justice inquiry.

The man accusing Jenik of abuse, Michael J. Meenan, said Wednesday that he first told the archdiocese about the inappropriate relationship in January.

“There must be a price to pay for this,” Meenan, 52, said. “Because people should not have to go through this.”

He said Jenik befriended him when he was about 13 years old at Our Lady of Refuge church in the Bronx.

According to Meenan, he began taking the boy for overnight stays at a house he owned in Tivoli, N.Y. Often it was just the two of them, and there would be more drinking. Meenan said his parents consented to the arrangement because they implicitly trusted the priest.